I love a good challenge. Recently, a friend of mine asked me if I knew of any good gluten-free desserts that could be grilled. I didn’t. I love to grill desserts but have never had to adhere to any kind of dietary rules or restrictions until now.
Typically, my grilled desserts consist of a seasonal fruit whose flavors intensify after being cooked over charcoal.
I decided on making a gluten-free grilled dessert pizza, which highlights some of my favorite sweet flavors of summer.
I always wanted to make a large pizza-sized chocolate chip cookie on the grill. I thought that a giant cookie would make a fantastic crust for the grilled dessert pizza. I followed the directions on a bag of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix and combined the ingredients in my stand mixer.
Gluten Free Grilled Dessert Pizza
Ingredients
Instructions
- The directions called for mixing the ingredients for about two minutes but at about the two-minute mark, my mix resembled soft wet sand.
- I let the mixer slowly do its thing and at about the five-minute mark, it came together like a cohesive ball of firm cookie dough.
- My grill was set up for indirect cooking and the temperature was stable at 350F as suggested on the baking directions.
- I pressed the gluten-free chocolate chip cookie dough between a top and bottom sheet of parchment paper and rolled it into about a 10-inch circle that resembled a cookie.
- The dough went onto the grill atop a piece of parchment paper to prevent it from sticking.
- The cookie directions mentioned baking for 12-14 minutes, but I checked it at 10 minutes. The cookie had grown in size and spread to about a 14″ circle. This was quite a bit more than I had planned for but, fortunately, my pizza stone had room to spare.
- I removed the cookie from the grill to cool while I sliced up a couple of peaches into thick wedges and got them grilling, cut-side down.
- The peaches grilled for about 12 minutes a side at 350F.
- They went on the grill very crispy and crunchy, under-ripe and, dare I say, bland. Something magical happens when you grill peaches. I watched them caramelize and get sweeter over the direct charcoal heat. The texture also changed from crisp to incredibly soft. Some of the smaller pieces seemed almost spreadable.
- Grilled peaches have a tendency to be quite sweet and I chose mascarpone cheese to balance the flavor with a slightly sour and creamy richness. Where I live in western Montana, the wild huckleberries are ripe now and as sweet as can be. Huckleberries have a much stronger smell and taste than a blueberry, and seem to be much juicer as well.
- I added about a cup of wild huckleberries to the mascarpone cheese and blended it in the stand mixer into a spread that smelled wonderful and stained purple from the berries. I spread the mascarpone and huckleberry cheese over the top of the large cookie as a foundation.
- Then I sliced the peaches thinly and topped the gluten-free dessert pizza so you could get a taste in every bite.
Cookie had gotten much larger during baking
Your mouth goes through the same happy range of emotions as a slugger who knocks one out of the park, touching all the bases before reaching home and winning the game.
The next time you are looking for a grand slam of a dessert, give the gluten-free grilled dessert pizza a shot. It is sure to be a home run!
As a wheat intolerant Big Green Egg fanatic with too few dessert recipes in my BBQ repertoire, I’m definitely trying out this recipe. Well done.
If you give it a try, let me know what you think!